


Burial Plots

by mrstater



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Minnesota, Multi, Police, Post-Season/Series 03, Wakes & Funerals, it's a real tragedy, uff-da
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 09:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11399871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: Nikki Swango is dead, but her partner in crime gives Gloria a little more detective work to do before she can lay the case to rest.





	Burial Plots

**Author's Note:**

> First Fargo fic! Many thanks to [Magical_Destiny](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/profile) beta reader and partner in Fargo crime. Be sure to check out her profile for a gorgeous Wrench fic!

Gloria had just finished typing her second resignation letter in as many weeks when the phone rang.

Although she reached for the receiver, she didn't pick it up, let it ring again, her hand hovering over it. She had a funny feeling, not just the déjà vu, but a sense that somehow, this was still connected to the Stussy case.

A third ring.

She could ignore it. Let this go. Case closed, end of story. It _was_. Ray and Nikki were dead, Varga was gone, and the only thing Emmit could be charged with was a federal matter. Far out of her hands. Moe's, too, which was about the only justice.

Fourth ring.

Gloria didn't ignore it. She'd felt nonexistent for too long to take being needed for granted.

"Eden Prairie Police, Gloria Burgle."

"Oh! Gloria?"

A familiar voice...

"This is Bill Larson over at the county coroner's."

Gloria closed her eyes. Why hadn't she ignored it? "Hi, Bill." Donny'd thought his name was _Bill Arson_ for years.

"This just gets weirder and weirder," said Bill.

"You're telling me."

"You were on the scene of the Swango shooting, yah?"

That made it sound like she'd actually done anything besides stand there, too late. Again. She opted not to answer directly. "You find her next of kin?"

"Nope."

Gloria was accustomed to flippancy in this line of work. You had to be, to an extent, seeing what they sometimes did and keeping on. Nevertheless, the almost cheerful note in Bill's tone made her heart clench. She was too close to this, to Nikki, to think of her being buried alone, mourned by no one, as anything other than a tragedy.

"But get this." Bill's voice pitched higher with his growing excitement. Gloria breathed through the tight feeling in her chest; coroners didn't get much in the way of excitement. "A substantial sum of money just came in--to cover the burial expenses."

"For Nikki Swango."

"Yah."

She started to lean back in her chair, only to sit upright again. "From who?"

"Dunno. Anonymous benefactor."

"Pretty strange all right, Bill."

"That's not the strange part." He was practically gleeful now, drawing out the suspense, but the knot in Gloria's chest had loosened enough that it didn't perturb her much.

"What is?"

"There was a note to call this number. Yours. I mean, it didn't say it was yours. Just the number on a piece of paper."

"Was there, now." Gloria should've been surprised. She couldn't even manage to sound like she was. Probably contributed to Bill's discomfort with the whole situation.

"Maybe you should come in for the rest," he said.

"On my way."

~*~

Emmit Stussy buried his brother in the family plot. He'd given Ray that, at least, though whether it came from the same place of remorse he demonstrated in his confession (made three months after the fact), or because even Emmit was smart enough to realize burying his brother anywhere else would cast him in a suspicious light, Gloria couldn't say with any great degree of certainty. The latter, she suspected.

Ray got a place in the Stussy plot all right, but not where he should've, front and center of his parents. As per usual, Emmit shunted him off to the side, the very edge of the plot, if Gloria had her guess, while reserving the prime spots for his own family. Who were no longer estranged; on the news, his wife and daughter had stood beside him, offering their unwavering support as he endured his legal troubles.

It'd be comical, if it weren't so cruel. A shared granite headstone etched _Beloved Husband and Father_ and _Beloved Wife and Mother_ immortalized the parents and Emmit's lack of imagination. _Raymond Stussy_ , read the flat marker sunk into the grass, followed by his birth and death dates. Nothing else. Not even a bouquet.

Maybe there were more tragic things than having no next-of-kin.

"Black sheep of the family," Winnie broke the silence as they stared down at the grave marker, their long-legged late afternoon shadows falling across it.

"To Emmit, maybe," Gloria replied. "The father left Ray the vintage stamps. Corvette was supposed to be Emmit's. Tricked his brother out of his birthright."

"Sounds like someone took the wrong meaning from the Sunday school lesson about Jacob and Esau," Winnie replied.

The shoulders of Gloria's shadow rose and fell with her shrug. "Jacob was the successful one, wasn't he?"

They lapsed into silence which, after a minute or two, Winnie broke again.

"Interesting, isn't it? That Papa Stussy left the more valuable inheritance to Ray." Her shadow's profile turned toward Gloria, and she in turn faced her friend. "Think maybe he didn't know how much they were worth? Or maybe Ray was the favorite?"

"Or maybe he didn't think Ray had the same drive to succeed as Emmit."

Winnie sucked in her breath. "Uff-da. What's that called?”

"Lack of scruples and a wonky moral compass?”

Snorting, Winnie said, “No, I mean Ray." Her smirk faded. "What's the term for when no one thinks you'll amount to anything, so you don't?"

Oh. "Self-fulfilling prophecy."

"That's it."

They faced the graves again. The Stussy parents' floral arrangements emitted a heady fragrance. Fresh. Regularly replaced before they had a chance to wilt. In a few weeks, there'd be Easter lilies.

"Turned out he had more drive than they thought.”

“Or Nikki did.”

On the face of his grave, Gloria's shadow hands slid into her jacket pockets, then she turned to walk to the car. Winnie followed, climbed in silently, and remained so until they were on their way.

"So this all falls to you why now?"

A thunk and the crinkle of paper; the sack of personal effects the coroner had given Gloria--lip balm, cell phone, clothes, shoes, engagement ring--had slid off the center console onto the floor in back.

"Because Nikki Swango meant enough to someone that they want her to have a decent burial, and I'm the only one who can do it."

 _I can help!_ Minsky chirped in her mind.

"Maybe that's my career move," she said as she turned onto University. It was prettier than the more direct route, cut past the park instead of the freeway. Not that the park was much to see this early in the spring, with the trees only just starting to bud and the grass still dormant, covered in frost in the morning. Still, a heck of an improvement over the Stussy lot under the freeway. "County Coroner. Since apparently I'm the go-to girl for burying folks who got no one else."

"Your stepdad, that's one thing. Swango…She killed an officer." Winnie's voice quavered, almost a whisper.

"That's true," Gloria admitted, quietly. "I don't believe that was her intention, but--"

"I know. For what it's worth, I don't either. But the fiancé she was avenging's the reason you had to bury Ennis."

"That's also true." Only his name wasn't Ennis.

They'd never know for sure what Ray's role in all this had been. Nikki's refusal on the subject of whether Ray blackmailed Maurice LeFay had been damning, even if it was purely conjecture and wouldn't hold up in a court of law. Probably the  murder by air conditioner was their teamwork, but again, lack of proof or anyone left alive to tell the tale. Or pay for the crimes.

Although they were paying. More than the state of Minnesota likely would've made them.

"The anonymous benefactor," Winnie said when they pulled up to a red light. "The other fella from the security pictures at the massacre? Identified as the missing prisoner from the transport?"

 _Wes Wrench._ Deaf. Wanted for some shootup a few years back up near Bemidji. "My feeling."

"Probably dirty money."

"Probably." The light changed. "Then again, maybe it's what should've been Ray's all along. And we know he'd want this."

Well, he wouldn't want to be dead at forty-five, followed shortly after by his thirty-two-year-old fiancée.  But they had to make the best of things. Or she had to make the best of things for them, as the case was.

They arrived at the funeral home, a brown brick relic from the 60s that looked more like the front of a motel. Gloria parked, but didn't cut the engine.

"Fact is," she said, "the night Ennis died--just before he died--I told Nathan there was some good in everybody."

"Do you still believe that?" Winnie asked, without a hint of cynicism, her eyes imploring. "After…everything?" An unspoken _Varga_.

"Not in everyone," Gloria admitted.

"But in Swango and Stussy?"

Nikki gave Varga's files to the IRS. Her motivation may have been strictly revenge, but she'd still done the right thing. Without her, there'd be nothing at all on Emmit or Varga, and Gloria would have nothing to show for this case, instead of the little she had. Nikki'd given her that, when she could've seen her as the enemy.

And this Wrench fella. From their rap sheets, they hadn't known each other prior to the prison bus; even if their records were incomplete, the coincidence would've been Moe levels of mashed potatoes. Which meant Nikki'd apparently made enough of an impression on Wrench that he'd not only stuck around to help with her revenge scheme, but now he wanted to do right by her in death.

Had he fallen for her?

Had she?

"They saw something in each other."

They got out of the car, but after the doors shut, Gloria faced her friend across the roof.

"You don't have to come with me if this feels wrong to you."

Winnie's round eyes drifted from Gloria's face, the light catching them, brows drawing above them, chin tightening beneath her round cheeks as she weighed the decision. "It'll piss off the brother, won't it?"

"Imagine so."

"Then at the risk of showing you there's some bad in me…" Winnie's mouth twitched, eyes sparkling. "I want to be here for that."

Gloria couldn't help smiling back, though she had to restrain it when they entered the funeral home and approached the director.

"Yes, I'm here to see about a burial plot…"

~*~

 _Where_ to bury Nikki was the easy part. _How_ to do it was considerably less so. What kind of service? Style of casket? Clothes? Gloria left the funeral home with a plot, but no clear plan.

"Only things I know about Nikki besides her criminal record are she liked fur coats, boots, dangly earrings, and Ray Stussy," she said as the car idled in Winnie's driveway, where she'd lingered to talk through the rolled-down window.

"I've gone on dates and learned less about people," Winnie offered with a shrug. "Gives you something to go on for the burial."

"I know what kind of pie she liked, too," Gloria added.

"Oh yah?"

"Coconut cream. With chocolate flakes."

"Yum."

"After Christmas, I was gonna take her a piece in Shakopee, and she was gonna tell me about Ray."

That was the moment when something shifted between them, prior to which Gloria had never for a moment considered that the con sincerely loved her parole officer. Nikki would talk about Ray, and maybe she'd say something that would clue Gloria in to the missing pieces of the puzzle. Instead, they'd carried their secrets to their graves. There'd been enough to close the case, but nevertheless Gloria wished they'd had that conversation so she could lay Nikki to rest.

"Christmas Eve," Winnie said with a shake of her head. "She finds out her fiancé was murdered when she's arrested for it. And then she's sent up. Why do I feel sorry for her? She _was_ a murderer."

"But not Ray's." _My Ray,_ Nikki had called him. _My Ray deserves better._ "And he didn't beat her."

Behind Winnie, the porch light came on, and the front door opened a crack, revealing her husband's face. "Win?" Jerry called. You out there?"

"Yup."

That was all she said, and Jerry didn't say another word before he disappeared back inside.

"I should let you get in to Jerry," Gloria said, but Winnie grasped the sliver of rolled-down window.

"What's on your mind?"

Gloria sighed, the evening air still chilly enough that her breath steamed.

"How's it that part of me feels like I know her?" Like a mirror image of herself staring through the bars of that cell. A woman who'd found herself living in an alternate universe, where nothing that had been real to her was true to anyone else. "Fact is, I didn't know Nikki any better than I knew Ennis." _Thaddeus._

"What'd you do then?" Winnie asked, matter-of-fact, as if it was a simple problem with a simple solution. "To get to know him?"

"Went to California."

"Then go to California. Or as far as you need."

Gloria didn't need to go that far. Next morning was slow at the station, so she popped over to the St. Cloud library in search of high school yearbooks. She nearly abandoned it before she began, when the computer catalogue listed the US Postal Service Commemorative Stamp Yearbook in the midst of the school entries. They knew too much, those computers.

But she shook off the spooky feeling and pulled the books from the years Ray would've been there, settled down with them in the reading room. So many page numbers listed beside Emmit's name in the index. Unsurprisingly, he'd been involved in extracurricular activities, popular, a good student, voted "Best Smile" and "Most Likely to Succeed" while Ray, chubby and shy-looking in his class pictures, never even made the honor roll.

He was captain of the bridge club when he was in the 9th grade and part of the 10th. Now that was interesting. Not least of all because high school bridge club had been a thing. Can't have been a popular thing.

Had Emmit ever put two and two together that Ray quit after their old man passed, put on more weight in those years? No wonder the kid had wanted that Corvette his brother assured would get him laid.

Once she'd exhausted the yearbooks, Gloria re-shelved them and moved to the microfilm room, where she scoured old copies of the _St. Cloud Times_ for any mention of the Stussy family.

The parents had been bridge partners, won a few city and county competitions before the father died. She hadn't outlived him by more than a few years. Ray would've finished high school. Had she given up bridge like he had?

There was Emmit's engagement announcement, his wedding. Ray'd been a groomsman--Sy Feltz, the business partner, was best man. Then had followed news of Emmit's rise as the Parking Lot King of Minnesota. His philanthropic work. His wife's social activities, their daughter's school achievements, engagement, and wedding. Not a mention of Ray--Gloria already knew from casework there were no marriage, divorce, or arrest records on him. Nothing at all, for decades, until his obituary, and the ensuing murder investigation, his ex-con fiancé the suspect.

"You were invisible, Ray. Betcha wondered if you really existed."

Until Nikki Swango saw him.

None of this was giving Gloria anything about _her_.

"What would you have told me about him?" she mused aloud. "What would you have said over coconut cream pie in a visitation room?"

_What was it all for, Nikki Swango?_

~*~

"Didn't you have a little nose 'round her phone?" Winnie asked when they met up for drinks after work and Gloria reported on her library findings. Or lack thereof.

"Her phone?" Gloria echoed.

Winnie peered round-eyed at her as she sipped her White Russian. "Coroner gave you her personal effects, didn't they? Cell phone?"

"Out in the car." Still in the paper bag that had slid off the console, forgotten.

Dead. The battery was dead, plastic cold in Gloria's hand. She watched Winnie rifle around through Nikki's belongings in search of a charger, but there wasn't one.

"They'll have one at Walmart, though," she said, "just swing by on your way home."

Gloria nodded, and shortly after found herself in the electronics department, staring at a display of phone chargers as if she were a tourist in a foreign market. Nathan would've known right away what she needed, but he wasn't here. An employee in a bright blue vest emblazoned with the text _How may I help you?_ leaned on the counter, tapping long manicured nails on the glass. Dark bobbed hair, big earrings, tight jeans. Gloria didn't approach her, but waited till a kid who looked about Nathan's age wandered by and asked, "Can you help me?"

She ended up going with one of those cigarette lighter adapters so she could charge the phone on the way home. Winnie'd be proud, she thought as she used her pocketknife to cut through the excessive thick plastic packaging.

Didn't take long for it to have enough juice to light up, and only a little longer than that before it buzzed. At a stop light, she picked it up and read the screen: a text message, sent yesterday, from an unknown number. Gloria, of course, knew exactly whose it was.

_She believed in reincarnation._

Gloria leaned back in her seat. "Huh."

~*~

"Reincarnation?" Winnie trailed Gloria through the maze of clothing racks in JC Penney, Nikki's phone in hand. "Meaning, she's a Buddhist? Or a Hindu?"

"Could be." The scrape of metal hangers on the rack underscored Gloria's reply. "Could be something else."

"Suppose you can't text back and ask him to elaborate, him being a wanted suspect in the massacre and all."

"No. Shouldn't even be using his money."

Not that she'd found anything yet to use it _on_ . Shopping was far from Gloria's favorite pastime, and no one would say she had much in the way of fashion sense. Nikki didn't, either, least not to anyone with good taste, but she did have her own style. Nothing here jumped off the rack and screamed _Nikki Swango_ at Gloria. A sensible voice did try to remind her it didn't really matter, as it would be a closed casket affair, but she knew that wasn't true. It would've mattered to Nikki, to Ray. It _did_ matter to Wrench.

"She got a Facebook?" Winnie asked. "Might say on her profile, religious beliefs."

She looked up at Gloria, and Gloria glanced down at the cell phone her friend held. It was a thought, but…With a shake of her head, she turned back to a rack of blouses, flicking through them without really seeing.

"Going through a woman's phone, even a deceased woman's phone...That's a big breach  of privacy, isn't it? It'd be one thing if it was for a case, but I'd just be satisfying my own curiosity. Voyeurism. Exact reason I avoid smartphones and social media and the like."

Winnie sniggered.

Gloria swung back to face her. "What?"

"Nothin'," Winnie said, eyes dancing with laughter. "Just…I'm surprised you know the term _social media_ , is all."

Gloria's attempt at rolling her eyes gave way to a huff of laughter at her own expense.

"Seems to me that's why people have it, though." Winnie said, holding the phone out. "They want to be seen. For people to know they exist."

"Or existed."

~*~

The ladies' room had a little seating area near the door--for nursing mothers, presumably, but no one was using it, so Gloria and Winnie sat down together on the battered sofa to look at Nikki's phone.

"I'm not even sure where to start," Gloria said, staring at the icons on the screen. Her thumb hovered over the Facebook one--at least, she assumed that was what the big F stood for.

"Maybe pictures?" Winnie suggested, pointing to an icon of a photo album.

Gloria doubted they'd find much there, it being a burner and all, and she was right. Most were of the storage facility, exterior and interior--surveillance to plot the massacre--and the St. Cloud Radisson, for some odd reason which couldn't have much to do with aesthetics. Another scheme?

"Seems she was a cat lover," Winnie remarked, during a series of kitten pictures.

"At least orange tabbies," Gloria noted.

She stopped on a picture of Nikki's fringe-wearing accomplice. He hunched over a book with the same intense set to his jaw as when he'd helped Nikki take out Varga's men.

"Think they had something going on, Nikki and this Wrench fella?"

"Maybe…" On his side, anyway. Why had he stuck with a stranger after their escape? Helped her on her revenge quest? Concerned himself with her burial? "But that'd be moving on awful quick from Ray."

"You think she was that…devoted?"

"She did go on a killing spree to avenge his death."

The bathroom door opened, and they fell silent as an elderly woman shuffled in, cane tapping on the tiles. She looked at them as she made her halting way through toward the toilets, and Gloria worried for a moment she'd overheard her last statement. But the woman only shook her head and said, "You young people and your phones."

When she was locked in a stall, Winnie leaned in, biting her lip against laughter. "Shoulda told her you can barely work this newfangled contraption."

"How do I get out of the photo album?"  

Winnie took the phone and tapped the home button. "Oh! Nikki's got a Pinterest." At Gloria's raised eyebrows, she explained, "It's like a virtual pin board. You can save pictures and links to things you like. Recipes, hairdos, clothes, home decor, party ideas…Real handy."

That did sound handy, but it was the way Winnie's eyes lit up and her voice pitched higher as she described it that made her smile. "You got one?" she asked, then immediately wished she hadn't as her friend's grin faltered.

"For nursery ideas," Winnie replied, cheerfulness forced. The toilet flushed, and she turned her attention to the screen. "Aw jeez."

"What?" Gloria leaned closer, in time to see the word _wedding_ before Winnie touched the icon.

Gloria was vaguely aware of the tap of the cane as the elderly woman emerged from her stall and hobbled to the sink and then out of the restroom as they perused the items Nikki was considering for her dream wedding: towering cakes, bouquets of blood red roses, form fitting gowns with flared skirts and crystal beadwork.

"Uff-da," said Winnie. "Her taste is…way outta my budget."

Gloria _hmm_ ed _._ "Out of an ex-con and a parole officer's, too."

The newspaper article about Ray's niece's wedding in Mexico flashed in her mind's eye. His money, for his wedding, he must've felt. Had he even been invited?

"Kinda breathtaking how quick she could shift gears," Winnie mused. "From planning her wedding to plotting how to take down a criminal. Mind like that could've been applied to a lot more worthwhile endeavors."

"Looks like she tried to," Gloria said, closing Pinterest and opening Facebook.

Across the top of the page, playing cards were laid out on a green backdrop, a hand fanned out in the foreground, inset with a small square picture of Nikki staring pensively off into the distance, one hand tangled in her hair.

Beneath it, the text:   _Kicking ass and taking names._

_Bridge player at Swango and Stussy_

"Huh."

"What?" asked Winnie.

"Bridge. Ray was in high school bridge club. His folks competed locally." Their headstone epitaphs flashed in her mind. _Beloved Husband…Beloved Wife…_

"Ya don't say?"

Gloria knew most of Nikki's biographical information from her rap sheet, but she scanned it anyway; reading what Nikki wrote about herself was different than what booking officers had taken down. Her age, so close to Gloria's own, made her chest tighten.

"Aha!" cried Winnie. "Religious beliefs, _spiritual but not religious._ Well shoot, that's unspecific."

"Rules out a lot of religions, though," Gloria replied. She could work with it.

For political beliefs, she'd put _the system is irrevocably broken._ Gloria smiled grimly. _Agree with you there, Miss Swango._ Recent events, however, led her to doubt whether they agreed on what to do about it.

"Wonder who her friends are," Winnie mused as Gloria scrolled down to a series of square profile pictures. "She doesn't have too many. Doesn't look like they commented much on her posts, either."

Probably wouldn't attend her funeral, then.

Winnie suggested they should scroll down to the beginning, so they could read Nikki's "wall," as she called it, in chronological order instead of backwards.  

_Swango's back and better than ever! Call me._

A thumbs-up symbol indicated a handful of people liked her post, but only one commented. _Wear did u go?_

_Shakopee._

No reply to that. Mentions of doing time generally did have the effect of shutting down conversation.

_Parole officer meeting today. :P Doing a little yoga to improve my chi. Prayers, good thoughts, and vibes, please!_

Someone asked, _U learn that new age hooey in Shakopee?_

Nikki didn't dignify it with a response, at least not directly; a few hours later, she posted again.

_Feeling serendipitous. :)_

"That in reference to Ray, ya think?" Winnie asked. "Love at first sight?"

At one point, it would've been impossible to believe, but of all the implausible things associated with the Stussys, Nikki and Ray hitting it off required the least suspension of disbelief.

Her next post, a few weeks later, supported Winnie's theory:

_My new bridge partner and I are so simpatico it's like we share a brain. Look out, bridge world!_

There was a picture of a scorecard with their names obscured, but it may as well have been hieroglyphics, for all Gloria knew about the game.

"Guess they won," Winnie said.

Soon after that, her relationship status changed: _Nikki is in a relationship._ It didn't say with who, of course.

Then, she posted: _Never dated a guy before with a shared interest and goal. We're a real team, my Ray and me._

From Nikki's Facebook posts, they looked like any couple in Minnesota. When they weren't playing bridge they went ice fishing. To the lake, camping. To the state fair.

To try their luck at MT's weekly meat raffle.

A picture of several pounds of ground beef, steaks, and seafood was captioned _, Get the deep freeze ready, baby, we won big._

Nikki Swango was riding high.

_First snow! Glad I'm spending it cozy inside watching the Gophers and eating chili with my Ray. Excited to pass down the family recipe someday. ;)_

"That's when they started talking about marriage," Gloria said.

Winnie groaned. "Darn it, I'm rooting for them. I keep hoping this'll turn out different than I know it's going to."

The first hint of that eventual tragic outcome emerged in Nikki's next post.

_When I'm the Bridge Queen of Minnesota, I promise not to become a shitty human being._

"I'm guessing that's after Ray asked Emmit for the stamp," Gloria said.

"Why couldn't you just give him the darn stamp, Emmit?" Winnie gritted out through her teeth.

"They had a Plan B." Funny how she hadn't really considered the overwhelming optimism of Nikki's posts till that one negative one. But she was back up again in the next one.

_Yoga session--tonight's the Wildcat Regional!_

Later that same night, she posted _: Third runner-up at the Wildcat Regional! Sponsorship, here we come!_

"What got in their way?" Winnie asked.

"Maurice LeFay," Gloria replied. "Look at the date."

Winnie's eyes widened. "Ray killed him the night of the tournament?"

"Or they both did," Gloria said, scrolling to a post made just a couple hours after the win:

_Dating advice: find a man who thinks you're sexy when you're using your brain._

Winnie gaped for a moment, then sat back, shaking her head. "Well I did comment on the not inconsiderable speed of Nikki's brain."

It was all too easy to imagine how that night played out, now they had the missing pieces.

Harder to reconcile how the next several days unfolded for Gloria as she investigated the murders, while Nikki's Facebook indicated she'd gone on with life as usual, scheming to make it big in the bridge circuits. For example, the December morning she'd gone to the Parole Board to question Ray, it announced: _Nikki is in a relationship with Ray Stussy._

It linked to his Facebook. Without any of her former reservations, she tapped on his profile picture. Cheek to cheek with Nikki, he had a mustache, and an actual _grin_ such as she hadn't seen in any of the yearbook pics. Eyes crinkled deep at the corners, but his gaze was on Nikki, not the camera.

"Can't remember the last time Jer looked at me like that," Winnie said, voice quiet.

"Ron never did at me." Gloria'd thought he had. Convinced herself. But that, like so many things, had been far from the truth.

She went back to Nikki's wall, where she'd posted, _My Ray understands truth and sacrifice and puts our relationship first. NOTHING stands in our way_.

"That's one way to look at getting fired for fraternizing with your cons," Gloria said.

He was lucky he hadn't been prosecuted for it. Her, too. Though maybe that would've been luckier for them both in the long run.

"She was a romantic, Nikki."

 

She posted a picture of an engagement ring glimmering on her fourth finger. That got a handful of likes and comments.

_OMG ur getting married? Congrats!_

  _Dayum gurl! Found you a man who treats a lady RIGHT._

The price Ray had paid for it had been too high.

_Got Ray's tux! He makes one handsome groom. Hope I won't put him to shame. <3 _

There was a little thumbs up symbol and the statement, _Ray Stussy likes this_ . He'd commented, too: _No one's gonna be lookin at me when u walk down the aisle, hon._

"He died the next day," Gloria said.

Nikki had never posted again.

~*~

Gloria buried Nikki Swango as close as she could to the Stussy family plot, beside Ray. The inscription on the headstone read _I am my beloved's, and he is mine,_ because Gloria couldn't get out of her head how Nikki always called him _my Ray_ , and because she would've been _beloved wife_ if she'd ever gotten to be his wife.

She wore a white dress, inside that closed casket. Not a wedding dress, but a form-fitting, short summer dress with a halter neck and beadwork on the bodice. On top of the coffin, a cascade of blood red roses, and a smaller bouquet of the same on Ray's grave. Like a boutonniere.

A Unitarian minister performed the brief graveside service--seemed a safe bet for _spiritual but not religious_ with an emphasis on reincarnation. Gloria thought it was nice, anyway, and Winnie, too. They were the only people in attendance.

Except for a figure in a fringed jacket watching from the distance.

Wes Wrench, wanted in two counties for murder, holding a wreath of orange lilies.

Gloria's pulse raced. She should call it in.

Across the cemetery, he nodded.

She walked past him, and pressed Nikki's cell phone into his hand.  

~*~

"All righty, here we go!" said the overly cheerful waitress as she set two plates on the table _._ "Two slices of coconut cream pie with chocolate flakes. Can I get you ladies anything else?"

Her eyes darted back and forth between Gloria and Winnie, who shook their heads silently, the funeral mood still on them.  

When she was gone, Winnie picked up her fork and stabbed at the tip of her pie. "It was a real nice service."

"It was, wasn't it?"

"Nikki would've liked it, I think. You know, as much as anyone could like their own funeral. Nice to see her and Ray side by side. Easy for them to find each other. If reincarnating's real."

She'd waved her fork around as she talked, but hadn't brought it anywhere near her mouth. She set it down on her plate with a ringing _clink_ and drew her hands into her lap. The pendant light over the booth reflected in her shimmering eyes.

"Jerry and me…We decided to take a break."

A heartbeat, then Gloria asked, "From trying for a baby?"

"From marriage. Something's coming between us. We're gonna see if it's that or…that there's actually _nothing._ "

Truth be told, Gloria'd suspected that might be coming. She gave her friend a sympathetic smile--because what else was there to do, to say?

"I tendered my resignation," she told her.

"About time!" Winnie said, brightening.

"Got an offer from the DHS."

Winnie picked up her coffee mug and extended it toward the center of the table. "To kicking butt and taking names."

They clinked mugs, then finally tucked into their pie.

"Speaking of taking names…" Gloria said around a bite, reaching into her jacket pocket for her phone.

"What the heck are you doing?"

"Signing up for Facebook."

Winnie snorted. "Hope you're sending me a friend request," she said in tones of obvious disbelief, but Gloria nodded.

"You and Nathan."

And Nikki Swango.

Winnie checked her phone, and let out a little shriek of laughter when she saw that Gloria had actually joined Facebook. She accepted Gloria's friend request.

By the time Gloria got home that night, her request to Nikki had been, too.


End file.
